{"id":25974,"date":"2014-12-19T07:25:38","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T12:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=25974"},"modified":"2014-12-17T19:26:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T00:26:52","slug":"left-behind-classic-fridays-no-12-the-naked-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/12\/19\/left-behind-classic-fridays-no-12-the-naked-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 12: ‘The Naked Truth’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

According to Left Behind,<\/em> the clothes of true believers will, like heathens and liberals, be left behind. This means both a sudden influx of nudity in Heaven and the sudden appearance, here on Earth, of billions of piles of unoccupied clothes.<\/p>\n

If you saw a dozen people instantaneously vanish, leaving only a pile of clothing where they formerly stood, you would probably take a look at those piles of clothing to try to figure out what just happened. But then you\u2019re not a character in Left Behind.<\/em> \u2026<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Left Behind,<\/i>\u00a0pp. 21-25<\/b><\/p>\n

Here we read with greater detail \u2014 although less detail than we might like \u2014 of how LaHaye and Jenkins envision the bodily rapture of believers, but not of their clothes. Thus:<\/p>\n

Harold\u2019s clothes were in a neat pile on his seat, his glasses and hearing aid on top. The pant legs still hung over the edge and led to his shoes and socks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

L&J seem to envision a great gathering in the clouds of all the believers in their born-again birthday suits. At the very least, this invites a rewording of some of the old gospel hymns about heaven: \u201cWhen the roll is called up yonder, I\u2019ll be bare.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a logic to this idea, I suppose. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve are described as going about naked and unashamed. So if the shame of nudity is a temporal, this-worldly consequence of fallenness and sin, then one could argue there\u2019s no need for clothing in heaven. (Admittedly, it\u2019s difficult for me to imagine this without also imagining the redeemed frolicking about, playing volleyball.)<\/p>\n

This heavenly disrobing also seems a bit suspect coming from the writers who created Rayford Steele \u2014 poster-boy for raging lust and repression. There\u2019s a whiff, perhaps, of something lascivious in this unexpected promise of heavenly nudity.<\/p>\n

L&J may also be missing a cross-promotional marketing opportunity. Back in the 1840s, William Miller made a nice profit selling his followers white \u201cascension robes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The news that Harold\u2019s eyeglasses and hearing aid are left behind along with his clothes follows the same logic about the restoration in heaven of all that is fallen, broken and less than whole. The heavenly Harold angel will hark without need of a hearing aid.<\/p>\n

But reading this about the hearing aid and eyeglasses makes one want to know more. You want Rayford or Buck to examine these piles of abandoned clothes more carefully. Isn\u2019t that what you would do? If someone vanishes leaving only their clothes, wouldn\u2019t you want a closer look at those clothes?<\/p>\n

And if the hearing aid is left behind, what about fillings, pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, toupees and silicon implants? In heaven, one imagines, teeth and hearts are healthy, missing limbs are restored, bald head\u2019s bloom like Rosenzweig\u2019s desert, and breasts are, well, everything that breasts are meant to be.<\/p>\n

Yet it doesn\u2019t occur to any of the characters on the plane to take a closer look at the rumpled piles in any of the empty seats. Even Buck, the GIRAT, remains steadfastly incurious in the face of this sudden mystery.<\/p>\n

Consider again the description of Harold\u2019s clothes and see if it doesn\u2019t remind you of something:<\/p>\n

Harold\u2019s clothes were in a neat pile on his seat, his glasses and hearing aid on top. The pant legs still hung over the edge and led to his shoes and socks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somehow, no one on the plane is reminded of having seen this\u00a0exact<\/i>\u00a0scene in dozens of \u201cshrinking man\u201d movies. My favorite such example is in the Beatles\u2019\u00a0Help,<\/i>\u00a0the scene titled \u201cThe Exciting Adventure of Paul on the Floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul accidentally gets injected with the shrinking serum that was supposed to shrink Ringo\u2019s finger so that he could remove the ring of Kaili. The others look away, then look back, and Paul\u2019s clothes are in a neat pile on his seat. The pant legs still hung over the edge and led to his shoes.<\/p>\n

Paul meanwhile, has been miniaturized, slipping down his pantleg and onto the floor where he\u00a0dons George\u2019s discarded gum wrapper<\/a>, and\u00a0bathes in orange soda in an ashtray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"ExcitingAdventureofPaulontheFloor\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We readers know, of course, that Irene had been right, and\u00a0Left Behind<\/i>\u00a0is a rapture story \u2014 not the story of the fantastic voyage by an adventuresome band of microscopic airline passengers. But it seems strange that the characters should know this as well.<\/p>\n

Confronted with the bewildering sight of all these Pauline piles of clothes, you\u2019d think it might have occurred to the folks on that plane to tread carefully. If I were on that plane, I\u2019d be checking my shoes on the off-chance that Harold and the others missing were now on safari among the harsh, tree-like strands of the plane\u2019s carpeting, fashioning its microfibers into crude weapons with which to battle gargantuan, monstrous dust mites.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that the shrinking scenario (whether via the filthy eastern ways of Kaili, or via a shrinking ray from some trite hackneyed mad scientist) is the most plausible explanation for the passengers\u2019 disappearance. But it\u2019s no less fanciful than any of the other suggestions that might quickly spring to mind.<\/p>\n

These would include, among others: mass hallucination\/insanity, alien abduction, rapture\/Enochian assumption, spontaneous human combustion, rapid-acting flesh-eating bacteria, wormhole in the space\/time continuum, the return of D.B. Cooper and his extended family, and\/or an evil sorceror from an alternate dimension plucking away slaves to work in his sulfurous mines. You can probably think of others.<\/p>\n

Sherlock Holmes famously said, \u201cWhen you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.\u201d Confronted with the apparent impossibility of the mass disappearance, it ought to occur to the people on that plane to begin speculating on the possible, if improbable, explanations.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s bewildering is the characters\u2019 lack of bewilderment, their lack of curiosity. No one inspects the piles of clothes. No one seriously attempts to consider who disappeared and what else they might all have in common.<\/p>\n

If you were on a plane, and 50 or so passengers suddenly disappeared shortly after dinner, wouldn\u2019t it be good to find out whether or not they\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0had the salmon?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you saw a dozen people instantaneously vanish, leaving only a pile of clothing where they formerly stood, you would probably take a look at those piles of clothing to try to figure out what just happened. But then you’re not a character in “Left Behind.” …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-25974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\nLeft Behind Classic Fridays, No. 12: 'The Naked Truth'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you saw a dozen people instantaneously vanish, leaving only a pile of clothing where they formerly stood, you would probably take a look at those piles of clothing to try to figure out what just happened. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}